Oscar-Winning Filmmaker Michael Moore To Receive Critics’ Choice Lifetime Achievement Award
Author, journalist, director, left-wing activist, and Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Michael Moore will be the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award at the third annual Critics’ Choice Documentary Awards in November, as Variety reported. The Critics’ Choice Documentary Awards is a joint effort by the Broadcast Film Critics Association (BFCA) and the Broadcast Television Journalists Association (BTJA). The event will feature a variety of awards in numerous categories for both television and film, and the winners will be decided by members of both the BFCA and BTJA.
President of the BFCA Joey Berlin recently released a statement for the upcoming event, as Variety documented.
“2018 has been hailed as ‘The Year of the Documentary’ and we are extremely proud to highlight the outstanding achievements in the Feature Documentary and TV/Streaming fields and give these creative filmmakers the proper recognition they deserve.”
While we’ll have to wait until October 15 to find out the nominees for the various awards, we know that Michael Moore will be the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award. Moore’s projects center on a variety of topics, including globalization, health care, gun control, and the War on Terror. His documentaries have targeted numerous powerful leaders, including Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Donald Trump.
A Flint, Michigan, native, Michael Moore’s first documentary was 1989’s Roger & Me. The highly praised film featured Moore pursuing General Motors CEO Roger B. Smith to confront him about the harm that was caused to Flint after the company’s massive downsizing. Moore would go on to direct several television documentaries and satirical shows, including The Awful Truth, but it was 2002’s Bowling for Columbine that earned the filmmaker an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. The Oscar-winning title focused on the Columbine High School massacre, as well as gun culture in the United States.
Moore’s 2004 documentary, Fahrenheit 9/11 — a film that criticized George W. Bush and the War on Terror — remains the highest-grossing box office documentary of all time. The movie won the Palme d’Or, Best Documentary at the Critics’ Choice Movie Awards, and the People’s Choice Award for Favorite Movie. In 2007, Michael released Sicko, a film centered on health care in the U.S., and it is in the Top 10 highest-grossing documentaries of all time.
In September of 2018, Moore released his most recent documentary, Fahrenheit 11/9, a movie that examines the current state of American politics, the power of grassroots Democratic movements, gun violence, and the presidency of Donald Trump. Or, as the official synopsis reads on Rotten Tomatoes, the film is a comedic and provocative look at the times in which we live, and “it will explore the two most important questions of the Trump Era: How the f**k did we get here, and how the f**k do we get out?”
Let the Right berate and debate until they're red in the face…@MMFlint invites you to join like-minded, level-headed and sane folks at a theater this weekend. #Fahrenheit119 https://t.co/pg3yzwcN5y pic.twitter.com/SoyZARvZ6o
— Fahrenheit 11/9 (@Fahrenheit11_9) September 29, 2018
The movie earned $5.7 million at the box office in the first two weeks of its release. While that figure seems unimpressive compared to Sci-Fi blockbusters, Fahrenheit 11/9 is one of the top grossing documentary films of the year, and the recently released film is expected to be nominated for a variety of awards.
You don’t need an FBI investigation to tell you which one was lying & which one was telling the truth. I don’t need someone to do a background check for me to tell me which one of the below likes me & which one doesn’t. It’s called instinct, it nearly always works, and it’s free. pic.twitter.com/KkvaKIjHqr
— Michael Moore (@MMFlint) October 5, 2018
For his work and achievements as an award-winning filmmaker, Michael Moore will be honored at the Critics’ Choice Documentary Awards on November 15 at the BRIC in Brooklyn, New York, and Bill Nye will be hosting.
